Читать книгу The Metal Master: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 8
ОглавлениеINTO THE TRAP
The next development in the mystery of the Metal Master, as it came to be called, occurred in Havana harbor.
“Tops’l” Hertz, who was to act a grisly part in the matter of the Metal Master, was jumping about barking orders. He was trying to get his big two-masted schooner, Innocent, to sea in a hurry. He did a good deal of cursing.
Tops’l Hertz probably would not have been jumping about swearing had he known about Doc Savage. Tops’l became a cold customer when he was scared. Tops’l had heard of Doc Savage, but as far as he knew, the bronze man had never heard of him. On occasion, Tops’l had hoped he never would.
Doc Savage’s name often kept gentlemen of Tops’l Hertz’s brand awake nights.
Tops’l, in his lighter moments, gave play to a foxy humor of sorts. He had named his schooner Innocent during one of these arch intervals. The hooker was anything but angelic.
The Innocent had been a rumrunner back in the days when that paid, and now she was doing a bit of smuggling guns and ammunition to hopeful revolutionists in Central America and elsewhere. She was versatile; she also ran aliens and other things, principally narcotics, which latter is as evil a profession as the world offers.
Occasionally, the Innocent participated in a high-class murder for hire. Her forward hatch was hacked and scarred, and the crew would tell you that fish were dressed there. Naturally, they couldn’t be expected to mention a human body or so that had been cut up on the hatch for the sharks.
Taken altogether, the Innocent and her crew formed a combination that could have taught Blackbeard a few things.
The schooner cast off from the fuel-oil dock and drifted out of the harbor under the thrust of her Diesels, which could, weirdly enough, hurl the vessel along at a speed that more than one coast guard cutter had failed to match.
A mile off Morro Castle, which is at the mouth of Havana harbor, a fight broke out forward. Blows. Curses. A man howling in pain.
“I may be a stowaway, but I object to being stowed away!” squawled a nondescript voice.
Tops’l Hertz hopped nimbly forward, wearing his most ominous look.
He saw one of his sailors. The man was holding a stowaway, who had just been hauled out of a deck locker.
This stowaway was not tall, and he was thin and wan and puny-looking. His clothes were in bad shape. He seemed hardly able to stand up, as if from some constitutional weakness. Altogether, he had very few visible qualities to recommend him.
Which shows how deceptive appearances can be.
“What the blarsted ’ell is goin’ on ’ere?” growled Tops’l Hertz, who had a Limehouse accent, except when he desired otherwise.
The stowaway tried to straighten his shoulders, and all but collapsed. He grasped a stay to steady himself.
“I’m Punning Parker,” he said. “I’m in bad with Scotland Yard and they’ve got a man in Havana looking for me. I heard you were a good man to go to, to get into the States.”
And thus “Punning” Parker introduced himself and his puns.
He produced a roll of bills amounting to several thousands of dollars. He peeled off a goodly number of the bills.
“I’m sort of a billing worker,” he said. “Not that I’m any dough-boy.”
Tops’l nearly shuddered. He hated puns. But he did not let his personal likes affect his business sense.
“Stick aboard,” he said. “Hi’ll take care of you.”
Now this was not the snap decision it seemed. Tops’l Hertz had suddenly remembered having seen Punning Parker in Havana a number of times recently, and the word had gotten around that Punning Parker was a bad but clever one. In other words, he was a “right guy.”
“What you’re doing won’t ever Hertz you,” said Punning Parker.
“Come aft an ’ave a drink,” invited Tops’l.
They went aft and had, not one drink, but several, and Tops’l Hertz listened to Punning Parker talk about things he had done in England and elsewhere, after which Tops’l Hertz became convinced that Punning was indeed all right.
The cash which Punning paid over in advance had a mellowing influence, too. Tops’l liked to think he was the kind of a guy whom people would trust.
Tops’l Hertz got around to showing his new crony a radiogram which he took from his sweaty pants pocket. It was simple and to the point:
GO NINETY MILES SOUTH SOUTHWEST OF DRY TORTUGAS TO MEET MAN IN PLANE STOP MAN NAMED LOUIS TESTER STOP HE WILL LAND STOP KEEP TESTER SAFE AT ALL COSTS
CX
The message had, of course, been in code, and was then decoded, and the “CX” was the cryptic signature of a worthy for whom Tops’l Hertz had done a little job or two in the past. Tops’l explained this to Punning Parker.
“The landin’ of you in the States will ’ave to wait until this job is done,” Tops’l pointed out.
“You have your Tester-day to-day,” said Punning. “Sure.”
The truth was that Tops’l had never met “CX,” and did not know whether that personage was man, woman or organization. Tops’l did not worry on that score, because “CX” had paid well in the past, and that was all that was really necessary.
Time passed.
A sailor crouched on the cabin top. He was wearing a telephone headset, and wires ran from this to an amplifier box, thence up the mast to a very modern aërial listening device attached to the mast top. Tops’l had installed this plane-finder, after the coast guard started using planes.
“Plane comin’!” yelled the sailor at the listener.
Tops’l Hertz stood up, listened, heard the plane with his unaided ear after a bit, and was out of the shade of the mainsail like a scared cat. He ripped orders. Preparations got under way, such as had not been made already.
And Punning Parker came ambling up out of the cabin.
Punning Parker was something of a character. A stranger, looking at him for the first time, could not have seen much to recommend him. But he had a lot. He was not tall, and he was thin and pallid and weak-looking. At times, when he was just standing around, he would stagger as if he had gotten weak and were going to fall down. He looked as if he were no earthly good. He had nothing visible to recommend him.
“This must be the blarsted plane comin’,” said Tops’l Hertz. “Get the bloody Vickers ready!”
The descriptive “bloody” was a favorite with Tops’l, but it particularly fitted that Vickers, which was a machine gun that could spray death at several hundred doses per minute.
With a gusty buzz, the plane came down in the foggy sky. It leveled out and circled a hundred feet or so above the schooner’s mast tops. The masts projected above the fog, which was only a thin layer. The plane had done well to find the schooner.
The plane was a cabin job fitted with pontoons. Not a large aircraft, but a fast one.
“Get set!” yelled Tops’l.
Tops’l had a shock of white hair which stood up straight and which had given him his name. The hair did look something like a topsail.
“Let ’er bleed!” he screamed.
The Vickers “bled.” It ran red at the nose and poured out lead and noise and shook itself and shook the men handling it. Empty cartridges showered the deck, for, in the general haste, there had been no catch-bag fastened to the ejector.
Tops’l Hertz was simply taking no chance of the plane pilot getting wary and going away.
Overhead, the plane motor got sick. It gagged and popped and had spasms. The sickness was short, then it died. The machine gun burst had done something to the motor.
The plane spanked down on the sea somewhere off to port. They could see it until it was almost on the water. Then the fog swallowed it.
“Start the bloody kicker!” yelled Tops’l Hertz.
By the kicker, of course, he meant the motor, which was hardly a fitting name for that piece of machinery. It was a Diesel powerful enough for a destroyer, and less than a year old. It had been painstakingly pitted with acid, so that it looked, outwardly, rusted and practically worthless.
The schooner Innocent came up on the plane, which was afloat like a crippled duck.
Tops’l Hertz leaned over the rail amidships, a pistol in hand, to finish things. Punning Parker was beside him, likewise with a pistol. Punning was assisting as a matter of professional courtesy. They took a good look at the plane.
“Who’re you?” yelled Tops’l Hertz at the man on the plane.
“Louis Tester!” shouted the latter. “What’re you trying to do to me?”
“You might say we have planes for you,” said Punning Parker, punning a bit more badly than usual.
